


With This Red Thread You'll Know

by navaan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Engagement, Fate & Destiny, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Red String of Fate, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 02:05:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14149572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: That one thread will mean much to you. It will tangle and stretch and you will strain it to the verge of cutting it, but like the others it won't break. This might just be your marriage thread.Tony waits for the right person, but what does it take for him to trust that he found them?





	With This Red Thread You'll Know

**Author's Note:**

> M for some tiny bit of sexy times. 
> 
> This is my fill for my Cap-IM fairytale bingo card, and Caz chose the “Red Thread” myth from Chinese/Japanese legend for me for my free space. Also a fill for my stony bingo card for the “hugs” there. Thank you so much for bringing up the idea and brainstorming and very quickly looking at it! (All mistakes mine as heavy editing happened after... *coughs*)
> 
> References Red Zone, Civil War and Civil War II/Secret Empire in passing.

Tears were still streaming down Tony's hot cheeks when he stopped at a tree. His lungs hurt from all the running, and he wasn't feeling any better for it. Running away had been supposed to make him feel better. Breaths came in shallow puffs and he was feeling quite nauseous now.

He sighed heavily as another sob wrecked his little frame and when he looked up he realized he was all alone. He couldn't even hear people and it was later than he had expected. He'd never been out alone in Central Park. His parents always worried too much.

Now that he was alone, _he_ worried too.

And the air was cold and there was still an eerie quiet hanging around them. The light was going. It was getting dark fast. Realizing that he had no idea how to go back to the group or his mum, he sat down and sobbed.

“Little boy,” a soft voice asked, “why are you crying?”

His sobbing stopped. Surprised he looked up. He hadn’t heard a sound when the adult who had spoken approached him. A tall woman with dark hair was leaning over him from the side of the tree – like she'd stepped right out of the trunk.

Trying very hard to act tough, he wiped away the tears that clung to his face. “I'm not supposed to talk to strangers,” he said pushing out his chin and wrapping his arms around himself.

The woman smiled and stepped fully out of the shadows. Her hair was a wild mess and her dress was a piece of clothing like he'd never seen before: made up of patchwork scraps and yet it looked shiny and new and expensive. If someone had asked he would have had a hard time describing it. It was amazing - and yet defying all order. 

“Of course, you aren't,” the woman said. “You're a little boy, Tony. Little boys aren’t supposed to talk to strangers.”

She patted his head and crouched down to be eye to eye with him.

“How do you know my name?”

He was all but seven years old, but he knew well not to trust weird adults.

Just something was very _off_ about this one. Instinct told him that as surely as every other kid knew there was something _off_ about Tony.

But she had a kind smile like his mom's.

“Why are you crying Tony? You can tell me.”

He couldn't stop himself.

He sobbed again.

And he sobbed harder, because he knew exactly what his father would have to say about this. _Weak. Don't cry, Tony. Boys don't cry. You need to be tough._

“Nobody likes me. All the kids hate me because I'm smart. Greg Sanders says I'll always be alone. Nobody will ever like me.”

“Oh?” The woman leaned down. Suddenly her eyes glittered like sparkling diamonds. “That's not true, Tony.”

With a long-fingered hand she touched his own. Her fingers moved in the strangest way – like they were boneless and spider-like, and the touch was cold and warm at the same time - _inhuman_. Tony froze. But here was no sense of alarm. Somehow he knew this person and obviously she knew him. He watched her fingers move along the side of his little hand.

And then, around the fingers of his left hand, everything exploded in color.

“See this?” she asked.

He gaped. A strands of a multitude of colors went out from his little hands. Threads in gold and yellow and green and blue – and just a few in red.

“These,” she said softly, “are the people you'll meet; all the ones that'll matter to you.”

“All of them?” He was too stunned to be afraid of it. Around them the wind had stopped and the leaves of the tree weren't rustling anymore. The eerie quiet had settled around them like invisible walls had sprung up. His voice rang out so clearly that it startled him.

“Only the ones that matter. Friends, enemies, lovers, people who'll make a difference to you.” She touched a bright yellow thread and it made a sound when her finger touched it; a bright happy sound. He wanted to hear it again.

People.

These were all people.

And there were so many that mattered.

He tried to count, but the strands were moving, swaying, tangling and untangling, going off into the distance until he couldn’t see them any longer. They were all centered around his hand and going out from it into the world. And he could only see their beginnings.

“Where do they end?”

“On other people's fingers.”

That made no sense at all. “Why have I never seen them before?”

She laughed - the sound clear like a jingling bell. Then she whispered: “Only the fates can see them. Only the fates can show them. Now you can see them, because I can make you see them.”

He had no idea what that meant. The threads had all his attention. There was a bright yellow one right next to and tangled with a blue one and a shimmering whitish blue one that seemed to crackle with electricity around it. He wondered what that meant, what the person behind it meant to him. Was lightning good or bad?

An intensely green one seemed to be shaking the way Tony shook sometimes when he tried to contain his anger or sadness and there were some black ones but none of them felt dangerous to him.

But there were so many more. He tried to commit them to memory.

One stood out; that one – a rich red that he thought was appealing – was tied to his little finger – and pointed in a direction far from the others and it was stretched so very thing that it looked close to breaking.

“What's with this one?”

The woman smiled and let her finger run along it. She chuckled at the sound it was making like it was telling her the story behind it that Tony couldn’t see. 

“That one will be important, but it still has to catch up with you. You'll _find them_ though. And it'll matter. That one will mean much. It will tangle and stretch and you will strain it to the verge of cutting it, but like the others it won't break. This might just be your marriage thread. You'll love this person.”

Tony thought of his parents – of the argument they'd had about Tony that very morning, about the sadness he'd see on his mother's face when they would finally find him here to bring him home, of the game the kids had been playing of make believe marriage – and the snide way Julie Andrews had said, _nobody likes you_ , and the way her brother had sneered, _nobody will marry a freak like you._

A tear rolled down his cheek. “I don't want to marry,” he said. “Never.”

She leaned forward and kissed his brow.

“Don't cry, Tony.” But her smile wasn't hopeful at all; it was a neutral mask. The kind his mother wore sometimes after she and his father had argued.

He watched the strange woman’s hand move again, and the threads blinked out one by one, too fast for him to follow with his eyes. Losing the ability to see them in that moment felt like losing them and everything they stood for completely: all the friends, all the connections, all the possibilities his seven year old mind couldn't really understand yet, but that to him in that moment meant an end to loneliness.

He gasped in shock.

The woman looked at that last stray stand that went in the wrong direction for a long moment, her hand hovering above it. Then she smiled kindly and put her hand over his and whispered: “I'll leave you this as a reminder. A partner is waiting. One day things will fall into place and you'll realize you'll never be without love. Then you won't need to see it anymore. That's my gift, little boy. Now stop crying.”

“What happened to the others? All the colored threads - where did they go?”

“Nothing happened to them. They're still there, unbreakable, but you can't see them.” And when she pulled her hand away, all he could see of that dark red cord was a tiny, simmering bow made of the thinnest, nearly translucent thread that was wrapped around his finger, like a thread you’d tie there to not forget things.

He stared at it, tried to touch it and realized he couldn't. But he wasn't alone anymore. Somewhere out there and important person was waiting to catch up with him.

When he looked up to thank the woman, she was gone.

* * *

The little bow on his finger never vanished. Only Tony could see it.

He grew, started to make friends. His life started to look up. He fell in love for the first time and wondered if he wanted to get married after all, but the little red bow shimmered in a dim light – and nothing ever came of it. 

He fell in love again – or at least he thought so.

Then his parents died.

Ty left for Europe. 

His girlfriend moved on to someone else.

Life became responsibility and business.

Then Tony nearly died. He lay in a shack somewhere with Yinsen at his side, feverish and in pain, listening to the doctor as he talked about family and what Tony could still do if he survived, and on his finger the little red thread glimmered.

Tony wondered if you could die before you'd met your important person.

* * *

“You pulled me from the ice?” Steve asked. It had been a hell of a day for all Avengers and now Iron Man was trying to help Captain America settle in.

“Me and Hank, yes.”

Steve's smile was the brightest, happiest expression after he’d looked shaken up for most of the day.

Tony's broken heart fluttered. Who would have thought he would ever be talking with someone like Steve Rogers?

* * *

A couple of times he wondered if Steve was one of his love threads. But they never get to the point where they _talked_ about their friendship being more and Tony never dared to bring it up. And so they remained friends. Tony remembered the strange fairy person telling him how much he'd stretch that one cord.

_Wishful thinking, Stark. Steve's your friend. He'll never look at you like that. Look at him now: happy with someone else._

* * *

None of his engagements ever ended in marriage. The bow around his finger never vanished. He wondered what that said about the hope he'd put into the words of a random stranger, who – as he had realized years later, must have been a magic user of some kind or other.

_You were just a stupid kid and someone promised you friends and happiness. Of course you latched onto that hope. But you didn't ask for this._

“I wanted to ask about that,” Stephen strange said after they'd had a meeting with the Avengers and he covertly touched the little bow that was still sitting on Tony's finger.

“Don't ask me to explain it,” he said and winced. “I hate magic. I really do. I'm sorry, I know you're the top honcho of magic around here, but...”

He had started to believe that it was all a cruel trick played on him a long time ago.

But Stephen frowned, serious and interested, but willing to drop it. “It's not dangerous,” he suggested. “It's not malicious magic whatever it is.”

“No,” Tony said. Although maybe, he thought, it _was_ a curse.

Then Steve called his name and he forgot all about it.

* * *

For a moment, when he gave his breath to make sure Steve survived, he wondered if they weren't bound in a way that went beyond love and friendship.

“You're always here to make a difference,” Steve said when they were sitting in the med bay later. “Don't get yourself killed, Shellhead. We all need you. I need you.”

But Tony was sure the world needed Captain America more. Perhaps that was why their strand would stretch and tangle? Because Steve was too important for Tony to ever bring this up and confess. Because everyone needed Captain America and did Tony’s love for him even matter in the light of that?

He tried to put the idea out of his head.

Steve was alive.

Nothing else mattered.

* * *

After all their entanglements he was sure it was Rumiko.

Then she died before they could get married. Her life slipped through his fingers like the thin thread that must have ended with her.

He was crushed.

But the little bow remained on his hand. It didn’t break or vanish.

He cried for her, for himself, for fate, loneliness - and the unfairness of it all.

What good was hoping for love if you never found the person that would be important to you?

* * *

He found himself crying at Steve's funeral. The little cord on his finger had dimmed again – a deep burgundy red but so translucent he thought it would dissolve. It never did.

That made it worse somehow.

Because Tony had loved Steve with all his heart, always afraid to lose him, always afraid to let the world somehow taint Steve. Fighting him for weeks had felt like he was killing a part of himself, but he had hoped to protect them all - Avengers, heroes, Steve.

And now he was gone.

Just gone.

And it was all Tony's fault.

Who else, he thought, will ever mean as much to me?

He wondered if Strange could get rid of his little magic cord for him. Because these days he hated looking at it.

Tony Stark did not deserve happiness and life seemed to agree.

* * *

Their fingers were laced together and Steve was moving over him, holding his hands above his head, while he moved delicious and slowly. “I want you so much,” he whispered in Tony's ear. “So much it hurts.”

“You have me now,” Tony promised and enjoyed the feeling of Steve's strong body against his back, the feel of his balls sliding against his buttocks. He had woken to Steve's embrace and somewhere between the warmth of the bed and the joy of waking with the man he loved, their good morning kisses had turned into something more than cuddling and less chaste and now Steve was taking him like he'd never before had the chance to have Tony like this: greedy, fast and relentless.

“We wasted so much time,” Steve whispered and kissed his shoulder. “So much damn time.”

The loss of control in sex had always been a turn on for him. With Steve it was a whole different level. He'd never felt as possessed and as safe at the same time as when Steve let him feel his strength and passion, bending him over or holding him in position with perfect super soldier strength.

It had surprised him at first – his own need for it, Steve's need for him.

He came much too fast, but let Steve ride it out as long as he needed, enjoying the feel of it even after the waves of the orgasm had passed. Steve’s hands held him in place steadily until he groaned and bucked hard into him.

Sated, he let himself fall face first into the cushions happy with the warmth of Steve’s body beside him, when he settled down beside Tony. 

The brightness of the room reminded him that he should be getting up and out of bed. There was a board meeting today; there was a business meeting for lunch; he’d wanted to get some work on the armor in that had been on his mind all week. But Steve’s arm around his hip was comfortable, the bed just right. The smell of Steve and their lovemaking clung to the sheets and he was sore in all the right places.

It was too good.

He was never going to move again.

Softly, Steve nuzzled the back of his neck and kissed the soft skin there.

Tony allowed himself to let the warmth and intimacy lull him back to sleep.

Kissing his temple one last time, Steve sat up.

It pulled Tony right back from the state of drowsiness. He’d planned to stay here with Steve, but if Steve didn’t want to stay there was no point of him sleeping in either. Tangled in the sheets he turned to the side to look up at Steve’s face.

Steve was half wrapped in the sheets too and his hair was tousled, his cheeks were rosy from their previous activity and his lips were red and swollen from kissing. He looked deliciously debauched - and yet Steve had done much of the work himself there this time.

When he looked at him like this his heart always went out to that man, relishing the image of a Steve that nobody would link to Captain America, because nobody but Tony got to see it.

Tentatively Steve smiled back.

“Hi,” Tony said and wriggled his eyebrows.

“Hi,” Steve answered and smiled brighter.

“Need to leave?”

“Not right away, no. I…” A serious note snuck into his voice. “I didn't plan for this morning. I had... other plans. There's something I need to say.”

It set Tony immediately on edge.

They’d been through so much together, always important to each other even when they fought, even when their lives drifted apart. Even _now_ , when Steve’s life had recently been turned upside down by a cosmic cube and was still dealing with the fall out of _himself_ nearly turning the world into the empire Hydra had always dreamed of. Even now, when Tony had only recently returned from death.

Guiltily, he looked at the finger with the shiny red bow that only he could see. He’d hoped, hoped so often, that it was Steve. It had always come back to Steve; every single time he’d given up on the notion. But he had known this was too good to be true and the little bow had never become invisible. It was still there now. 

Tony’s face fell. To brace himself he tried to sit up and meet Steve’s gaze. At the very least he could meet this head on.

Steve had pulled up his legs under the sheets and he was studying Tony like a man who was trying to make up his mind. “You look white like a sheet suddenly,” Steve said. “Maybe you should stay in bed?”

“What did you want to say?” he asked and his voice was so faint it scared even himself.

His heart missed a beat when Steve watched him and his face changed somehow from one kind to a different kind of worry. “I wanted to…”

Tony just wanted him to say it, get it over with.

Steve swallowed; an uncharacteristic sign of nervousness. “I wanted to ask you to dinner and...”

There were too many ways to end that sentence. Silently, Tony watched Steve reach for the nightstand.

Tony's apartment's night stand.

Where Steve had started putting his own stuff.

That seemed a strange thing to realize two seconds before things fell apart.

But he still waited for it with dread and the steely conviction to give Steve as much space as he needed when he asked for it.

The small gray jeweler’s box came as a surprise.

Their eyes met.

Steve looked flustered. “I wanted to make this very romantic and... We wasted so much time, Tony. Let's not waste anymore.” He opened the box and pulled out the simple gold band.

It didn't register.

Didn't sink in.

Until Steve grabbed his hand.

His breath stuck in his throat, because there it still was: the red thread that belonged to someone who was the right person, the person that wasn't Steve that was destined for Tony. It pained him to look at it, when everything he wanted was right there in front of him and he wanted to scream with joy, but felt frozen in fear instead. Because Steve had that air of determination about him and he was inspecting Tony's hand as he slowly slid the ring into place saying: “We've been through so much and I know this is fast. But it's never going to be the right time – and I just can't go on fighting and losing you and picking up the pieces. Not now that we’re finally...”

Steve stopped and swallowed.

The ring slid easily onto Tony’s finger.

It fit perfectly.

How could Steve have known?

“Tony? Say something.”

He knew he was staring at his finger and at the little translucent bow, knew that the selfish answer was, “yes,” but the right answer was, “no.”

He tried to swallow down the knot in his throat that was keeping him from speaking.

And then it happened, right in front of his eyes: The thread faded, faded, became more and more translucent and was gone. Gaping, open mouthed at his own hand, that hadn't been without the little thread of red since his childhood, the words still wouldn't come.

“Tony?”

“Huh,” he said and still contemplated how the golden band on the ring finger was now the only thing there. His heart was thumping so heart it must have gotten stuck in his throat. “Huh.”

_It's gone._

_It's really gone._

_Because Steve..._

He blinked up at Steve, not quite sure if there were tears in his eyes as he smiled shakily. Words still wouldn't spill from his lips, but when Steve caught his gaze, saw his smile, an equally happy smile formed on his face.

Tony kissed him first, let that be his answer.

Steve pulled him back down on the mattress. They were chuckling and laughing like children as they hugged and kissed and held on to each other.

The right person had been there all along after all.

“We're idiots,” Tony whispered.

“Yes,” Steve agreed and hugged him closer, not making one move to let him go again. “Let's waste no more time.”

“Let's waste all of today instead.” He let his face rest against Steve's shoulder, let his hand rest on Steve's chest and delighted in the fact that a real solid gold was the only color he could make out there.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me for fic updates on [tumblr](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/navaanwrites). This fic has a post on the tumblr [here](https://navaanwrites.tumblr.com/post/172418681444/with-this-red-thread-youll-know-navaan-marvel) in case you want to share it. It also has a page on my [Dreamwidth](https://navaan.dreamwidth.org/600244.html).


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